In the past, various Internet technologies for viewing various content have been proposed. With such Internet technologies, first, a user specifies desired content in a browser operating on a client. A request is then transmitted from the client to a server managing the content. Subsequently, a response including the content is transmitted from the server that received the request to the client. Finally, the desired content is displayed on a content area of the browser on the client.
As disclosed in Patent Literature 1, add-ons (also referred to as extensions, add-ins, or plug-ins) may be installed and added to a browser. An installed add-on is displayed in an add-on area of the browser (including a toolbar area, an address bar area, and a status bar area), and may accept input from the user or display various information.
Services made available using an add-on include the following, for example.
(a) Internet search. If a user inputs a query specifying a keyword or the like into an add-on, a server conducts a search, and a result is displayed in the content area.
(b) Site-specific search. Content managed by the same administrator as the content currently being displayed is searched.
(c) Store-specific search. On a server that realizes an electronic marketplace in which multiple stores participate, the product description page for a product satisfying a desired parameter is searched from among products sold by the store (seller) providing the product description page for the currently displayed product.
(d) Displaying various notifications for the user. A user name and password or a query specifying an already logged-in session ID or the like is periodically issued to a server, and information such as the number of new mails and unread messages, the number of points usable at an electronic marketplace, news headlines, weather reports, sale notifications, and advertisements and the like are displayed on the add-on area.
(e) A shopping cart at an electronic marketplace. The number of products that a user intends to purchase but has not paid for is displayed. If a mouse is moved over this add-on, a list of products in the shopping cart is displayed. If a product on the list is clicked, or if the add-on itself is clicked, payment content for purchasing products is displayed in the content area of the browser.
(f) Information about the content currently being displayed in the content area. Every time content is viewed with the browser, information such as certificate information, trust level information, or popularity information for the content is displayed in the add-on area.
Respective add-ons may be distributed separately, but in many cases multiple add-ons are provided as an integrated toolbar in order to bundle a series of services provided by a single server for easier usage. For example, a point display add-on, an advertising display add-on, and a shopping cart add-on may be available within a toolbar, such that points are accumulated at an electronic marketplace if a web search is conducted with a search add-on, usable points are displayed in the point display add-on, sales and campaign advertising that increase the point multiplier are displayed in the advertising add-on, and points are used to purchase products through the shopping cart add-on.
With individual add-ons, a program package storing such an add-on may be distributed, but a toolbar combining multiple add-ons may also be distributed as a single program package.
The latter format is typically configured so that, after installing the toolbar in the browser, the user is able to specify which add-ons available on the toolbar are to be enabled, and which add-ons are to be disabled, simply by checking items on a settings form of the toolbar.
Also, by using browser settings, it is also possible for the user to configure whether to enable or disable the toolbar itself.
In addition, a toolbar also works as a shared platform for each add-on. In other words, a toolbar is able to collectively execute and manage communication between each add-on in the toolbar, and a server. Also, in the case in which the toolbar itself is enabled, it is possible for the toolbar itself to operate autonomously and enable or disable each add-on in the toolbar.
Meanwhile, in content provided via the Internet it may also be possible to specify Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) elements that dynamically execute processes similar to the processes executed by the above add-ons. The position at which an HTML element is displayed may also be fixed at the top edge, bottom edge, left edge, right edge, or the like of the content area with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) technology. Besides such HTML elements, various link elements and the like that are placed at the top edge of the content area are called a floating header.
In order to realize a floating header in the simplest way, it is sufficient to enclose a desired HTML element in a div element, and specify the placement style of the div element to “position: fixed; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%” or the like.
In a process that executes such an HTML element, in order to query a server, a programming language such as JavaScript (registered trademark) may be used, and web application technology called AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) may also be utilized. Note that the use of AJAX is possible even in the case of adopting another programming language in order to develop an add-on or toolbar.
If a client issues some kind of request to a server, the server responds with content answering the request, even in the case in which the user inputs a Universal Resource Locator (URL) of desired content, and even in the case in which an add-on, HTML element, or script utilizes the server. Besides being content that is displayed in the content area of the browser and directly viewed by the user, the content sent in response at this point is often structured data. Structured data is often not expected to be directly viewed by the user, but rather processed by a program and then presented to the user.